Filmic Architecture - Moving Image + Mixed Reality

Abstract

In contemporary museums, curators use a variety of visual media to deliver content to their visitors. Although many museums have designed their online websites to help convey information to the remote visitors, seldom do they fully exploit the potential of digital technology. Emerging mixed reality (MR) technology has become popular recently in a number of areas, such as the entertainment industries, education and business sectors. MR can convey and extend information and experiences by augmenting physical environments with an overlaid virtual environment. This thesis proposes to explore how the museum experience can be augmented by the two-way integration of the physical and the virtual to articulate a hybrid exhibition environment.

The thesis uses the precedent of film and architecture to underpin both the design of the physical and virtual environments. Informed by a close analysis of film transitions, the design research addresses two issues: how we move and transition between spaces; and how can the physical and virtual environments be integrated. A research-through-design methodology is used throughout, with a series of exploratory design iterations providing insight and allowing targeted literature, film and project reviews. These provide a set of design principles that are explored further through the design of a Museum of the Moving Image, sited adjacent to civic square in Wellington.